


Anniversary

by Merlin Missy (mtgat)



Category: Phantom Passenger That Wants A Ride Home (Urban Legend)
Genre: Gen, Ghosts, Treat
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-10-03
Updated: 2014-10-03
Packaged: 2018-02-19 16:50:31
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 271
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2395673
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mtgat/pseuds/Merlin%20Missy
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Every year, she waits.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Anniversary

**Author's Note:**

  * For [DesertVixen](https://archiveofourown.org/users/DesertVixen/gifts).



Every year she waits.

Every year, there's a knock on the door, because she broke the doorbell after the first two years.

Every year, there's a helpful, kind face at her door. A new face, a new stranger, a new driver who says he's given her daughter a lift home. A soon-to-be madman, hair gone white in the morning.

Every year, she thinks she ought to sell the house and move away.

Every year, she thinks she ought to go out for the evening and try to forget.

She waits.

She opens the door.

She tells the story.

The details change. Sometimes the back seat is wet. Sometimes her daughter's sweater appears on his shoulders. Sometimes he doesn't believe, and she must show him the photograph in the black frame.

Every year, he drives away and she closes her door alone.

Every year, she waits for the one who will bring her daughter home.

This year, she turns off the lamps, turns off the radio, gathers her shawl and her car keys.

This year she drives out past the gully, past the turn, all the way to the other side of town. She passes the drive-in, closed these last fifteen years. She passes the hamburger joint. She passes the school. When she reaches the old dance hall, she turns off the engine and waits. After an hour, the sky opens and begins to pour. She turns the key, feels the engine mutter to life beneath her, and drives towards her home.

When the headlights catch a pale figure, she slows and stops by the side of the road, and she smiles.


End file.
